Paychecks shall improve in 2010 for India Inc

It is celebration time for India Inc. With media reports of the economic recession slowing dwindling away, finally companies are all set to loosen their purse strings to much-relieved employees. If 2009 was marred by the gloom of global economic downturn, 2010 promises to be a year with less of downsizing, job-freeze and most importantly, heftier pay packages to follow!

While the road to better pay package and compensation benefits depend on performance, companies are all out this year to recruiting ‘specialists’ - where both time and money can be optimised to impact the company’s profits.

“Companies will recruit employees based on their ‘domain expertise’. I foresee a 5-15% growth at a company-to-company and industry-to-industry basis, while naming IT, ITES and Infrastructures sectors as offering higher pay packages in 2010,” says Vivek Madhukar, Vice President, Timesjobs.com.

And which functional roles can expect a good raise this year? Says Madhukar, “Definitely revenue-generating roles such as sales agents, call-centre executives and software developers.”

Adds Anurag Batra, Chairman & Editor-in-Chief, Exchange4media Group,“Ad sales, Internet specialist and media specialist roles will benefit the most in terms of pay packages.” He continues, “Editorial salaries will flatten because of retrenchment in the last year leading to oversupply. Media CEOs who have proved their mettle in their last job will be in demand and will command premiums.”

A media and advertising veteran, Anurag Batra, predicts, “Advertising compensation might not leapfrog as business models of ad agencies will be further under pressure. A lot of advertising industry professionals will jump to the media side.”

Taking a cue from Madhukar, it seems to be actually good news for the IT and ITES sector as we hear it from another source. C.S. Puri, President, Puri Consultants & Associates, an executive search company, says, “Last year, there was only 4-5% hike in the salaries in the IT sector. This year IT companies are planning on 8-10% hike in salaries. Other sectors such as FMCG and Consumer Durables shall also see a reasonable growth in pay structures.”

While news reports of IT companies such as TCS, Wipro and Infosys have already done the rounds, there are other sectors as well where pay packets are bound to get heavier.

“The projected growth rate for luxury industry in India is as high as 25% over the next couple of years. This is a phenomenon that is being watched very carefully by the West, where the recovery process is much slower,” says Roasie Ahluwalia, GM – Marketing Communications, Genesis Luxury.

“Given this optimism in the market the surge is also visible in compensation packages. Jobs that were on freeze, are already back and the industry is looking at doling out good compensation packages,” continues Roasie.

Roasie also comments on the compensation standards in India. “I think most large corporates are already aware of compensation benchmarking and they do have reward systems that are tuned to performance. Given the current influx of International brands into India, we will have to further align ourselves to global best practices.”

And higher pay packets just do not end with the old guns! B-school graduates can expect a higher starting salary this year. Jyotirmoy Bose, Founder & CEO, White Spaces Consulting has this to share, “The FMCG sector has emerged as the industry of choice, as 44% management graduating in 2010 voting it as their most preferred industry in the latest Nielsen Campus Track–B School Survey.”

He adds, “The average salary expectation of students from their “dream company” has notched up a few decimals to Rs.14.6 lakhs this year. Salary expectation from a foreign company is almost twice than that from an Indian company.”

- Suniet Bezbaroowa (views expressed in the article are that of the author)